Challenge

"The Berenstain Bears" are a beloved series of children's books and cartoons. At the online forum called Reddit, a user claimed that the characters used to be called the "Berenstein Bears" ("-ein" rather than "-ain").

Here is a screenshot of his original posting:

As proof, he uploaded a digital picture that shows the characters with the "-ein" spelling. This is the image from his "HERE YOU GO!!" proof:

Click on the proof picture to evaluate it using FotoForensics. Can you determine if his proof picture was digitally altered?

Hint

Use Error Level Analysis (ELA). All similar surfaces should look similar under ELA. And all similar edges should look similar.

Does anything stand out as dissimilar?

Answer

Error Level Analysis (ELA) shows that the purple lettering at the bottom is inconsistent. The first part of the text, "The Berenst" is at a lower quality than the remaining text, "ein Bears".

His "proof" is a digitally altered image. The spelling was changed from "ain" to "ein". The artist then either rewrote "Bears" or moved it over -- likely to correct the spacing between the words. In either case, the "ein" and "Bears" were digitally altered. His claim about the "original spelling" is not supported by his proof.

As an aside, the Berenstain Bears books were named after their creators, Stan and Jan Berenstain.